The plan laid out by President Jose Manuel Barroso would not only allow the ECB to supervise all eurozone banks, but would also give it jurisdiction over a broader, and at first voluntary, EU banking base.

Why did U.S. regulators fail to react to the alarming increases in leverage at financial institutions, or the shift of trillions of dollars of assets from banks’ balance sheets that were packaged into complex securities? Three former regulators propose a solution to what ails our regulatory system.

The ongoing fallout from the subprime mortgage calamity in the United States may strike the United Kingdom quite hard, some observers believe. The Bank of England's recent surprise agreement to provide emergency bailout funding for troubled U.K. mortgage lender Northern Rock may only be a harbinger of things to come.